Ostensibly what is
going on in this Canto is the laying of blame upon desires. But I
think what Aśvaghoṣa is really interested in, below the surface of
today's verse and the ten following verses, is investigating what it
means to be in possession of oneself.

Thus, as a starting
point, in yesterday's verse, he draws the obvious contrast between
(a) really possessing something, having earned it and made it one's
own, and (b) borrowing something, having got it on the never never.

In today's verse
Aśvaghoṣa points to a truth about self-possession that is less
obvious, more ironic. The irony might be that we truly take
possession of ourselves not as we are prone to think when we
are young and filled with youthful optimism, by getting our dirty
paws on something, but rather in the cessation of grasping.

In a well-known passage
from Shobogenzo chap. 3, Genjo-koan, Dogen describes the same kind of
irony:

To learn
the Buddha's truth is to learn ourselves.

To learn
ourselves is to forget ourselves.

To forget
ourselves is to be experienced by the myriad dharmas.

To be
experienced by the myriad dharmas

is to let
our own body-and-mind,

and the
body-and-mind of the external world,

fall away.

Having written the
above yesterday and slept on it, while I was sitting this morning a
couple of Aśvaghoṣa's phrases came back to me which, after six
years, have gradually managed to engrave themselves upon my memory.
My memory is not what it was 25 years ago when I was translating
Shobogenzo, but happily here are a couple of phrases that have
managed to engrave themselves on it.

The first is
Aśvaghoṣa's description of the first dhyāna as

kamair
viviktaṁ malinaiś ca dharmaiḥ

distanced
from desires and tainted things (SN17.42)

The second is the
Buddha's injunction that

ānāpāna-smṛtiṁ
saumya viṣayī-kartum arhasi

sustained attentiveness
while breathing out and in, my friend,

you should
make into your own possession (SN15.64).

The latter phrase forms
a link back again to words of the Buddha that I quoted in connection
with BC11.20, from the Rāhula Sutta:

ānāpānasatiṁ
Rāhula bhāvanaṁ bhāvehi....

Develop the developing,
Rāhula, that is sustained attentiveness while breathing out and in.

In this way, Rāhula,
remaining attentive while breathing out and inwhen
developed like this and made much of

mahapphalā hoti
mahānisaṁsā.

yields great fruit,
brings great advantages.

A final reflection,
which is reflected in the above translations of smṛti and sati, is
that “remaining attentive” or "sustained attentiveness" might – along with Ānandajoti
Bhikkhu's “reflective awareness” – be more accurate and more helpful translations than “mindfulness.”

“Mindfulness" conveys a sense of taking care which might sometimes be unhelpful. As Patrick
Macdonald observed in connection with Alexander work: If
you are careful in this work you will never get anywhere. If you are
careless you might.

At the same time,
“mindfulness” fails exactly to convey the original sense which
smṛti has of the function of memory, or attention/consciousness
sustained over time.

For this reason it
occurred to me this morning to translate smṛti as “remaining
attentive.”
Though "sustained attentiveness" is longer and more unwieldy than any one-word translation, it strikes me as being potentially helpful to me, for one, as an aid to remembering to think developmentally. "Think developmentally" was advice given to me 16 years ago by Peter Blythe when I was training as developmental therapist, and it remains good advice. Coming across the word bhāvana in Aśvaghoṣa's writings has caused me to reflect again on what good advice it was to think developmentally. "Sustained attentiveness" is something that any of us can practice, yes, right away. At the same time, "sustained attentiveness" sounds like something to be developed... and for that reason "sustained attentiveness" or "remaining attentive" might be helpful translations. Those translations might help us to remember that we are in the business of developing whatever it is we need to develop as the antidote to ignorance -- whether that ignorance be conceived as neuro-physiological in nature (e.g. rooted in vestibular dysfunction) or as psychological (e.g. rooted in selfish views).

These verbal distinctions may sound like
small potatoes, but I know from experience how easily inexact
translations can throw us.

Several times in my 20s
I remember my Zen teacher telling me with a smile that “we have to
be cautious.” It was only years later that I realized what he meant
to say – doubtless in an effort to counter any tendency to rudeness that he might have seen in me – was “we have to be courteous.”